Early diversifications of angiosperms and their insect pollinators: Were they unlinked?

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2022.04.004. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

Yasmin Asar, Simon Y. W. Ho, Hervé Sauquet

Abstract

The present-day ubiquity of angiosperm-insect pollination has led to the hypothesis that these two groups coevolved early in their evolutionary history. However, recent fossil discoveries and fossil-calibrated molecular dating analyses challenge the notion that early diversifications of angiosperms and insects were inextricably linked. In this article we examine (i) the discrepancies between dates of emergence for major clades of angiosperm and insect lineages; (ii) the long history of gymnosperm–insect pollination modes, which likely shaped early angiosperm–insect pollination mutualisms; and (iii) how the K–Pg mass extinction event was vital in propelling modern angiosperm-insect mutualisms. We posit that the early diversifications of angiosperms and their insect pollinators were largely decoupled, until the end of the Cretaceous.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/rkbw7

Subjects

Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Keywords

angiosperms, codiversification, Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction, gymnosperms, insects, pollination

Dates

Published: 2021-11-19 12:57

License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International